News & Commentary

Today, the ACLU filed a lawsuit against Utah to force the state to continue recognizing the marriages of more than 1,000 same-sex couples who were legally married in the weeks after a federal court struck down Utah’s bans on allowing same-sex couples to marry. From the moment the federal court in Kitchen v. Herbert issued its decision on December 20, 2013, to the moment the Supreme Court issued a stay of the ruling on January 6, 2014 while the case is appealed, there was an outpouring of same-sex couples across the state who were finally able to express their love and commitment to each other through marriage and to protect their families through the protections and responsibilities that flow from being legally married.

Last week, Martin Luther King, Jr. would have celebrated his 85th birthday in an America that, in myriad ways, is a freer, fairer, and more just nation than the one he knew. Today, we pause to remember the man for daring to dream of equality of personhood and opportunity; for having the courage to transform what he called “the jangling discord of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood”; and — as President Obama put it so lyrically last year — for giving a “mighty voice to the quiet hopes of millions” and offering a “salvation path for oppressed and oppressors alike.”

Bonnie Raines broke into and stole every document from which government agency office in 1971?

President Obama just gave a landmark speech about NSA surveillance and the future of digital privacy. As we noted in our reaction to it (which you can read here), the president introduced a number of welcome, but incremental, reforms to NSA surveillance, while leaving in place — at least for now — the bulk collection of Americans' sensitive data.
In analyzi

The bad back that awakened me at 6 a.m. on this birthday morning and that spurred unpleasant thoughts of growing old dissipated in an instant with an email alert that our long-awaited decision in the voter ID had issued. I didn't have the opinion, but I had the result – we won! Thousands of hours of hard work in collaboration with my fantastic colleagues had not been a total waste. And that adrenaline rush only increased when I read the opinion.

Congress took an important step this week by passing an omnibus appropriations bill— one giant package to replace 12 spending bills that Congress passes in a normal year to keep the government running for the rest of FY 2014 and avoid another government shutdown. Immigration-related provisions are scattered throughout—some good, some bad, and some downright ugly. Here are just a few:

Today, The Hill's Congress Blog posted a commentary on the importance of Congress improving and passing the Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2014. Below is an excerpt from the piece, and the full commentary is available here.

As you may have heard, Justin Bieber is being investigated for egging his neighbor's home in Los Angeles. If the damage is found to be $400 or more, Bieber could be charged with felony vandalism under California law. A wrinkle that makes this different than the average pop star-in-peril situation is that because Bieber isn't a United States citizen, if he is convicted of a felony he could potentially be deported back to his native Canada. This potential loss to America is because under U.S. law, an aggravated felony or crimes of "moral turpitude" by non-citizens leads to mandatory detention and ineligibility for almost all relief.

The ACLU’s Chris Calabrese testified yesterday before the Senate Commerce Committee in a hearing on the economic benefits and the safety, privacy, and First Amendment implications of unmanned aerial vehicles — drones — which are poised to invade U.S. airspace by 2015. The hearing came on the same day as a front-page story in the Washington Post, describing the rapid spread of this new and powerful technology among law enforcement agencies.